In the 1950s and 1960s Adiga was a teacher in Mysore.[4] From 1964 until 1968 he was the principal of Lal Bahadur College in Sagara, and from 1968 until 1971 he was Principal of Poorna Prajna College in Udupi.[5] He later worked as the Deputy Director for the National Book Trust of India.[citation needed]

Although Adiga taught English literature, he wrote almost exclusively in Kannada, except for a single poem in English on Rabindranath Tagore in 1961. It seems that he wrote this at the request of M.N.Roy for the Radical Humanist magazine.[citation needed]

In 2007, Nadig brought out Selected Poems, Gopalakrishna Adiga, a work commissioned by Bharatiya Sahitya Parishat (the Indian Academy of Literature).[citation needed]

His poetic style is revealed in his 1957 poem "Prarthane" (Prayer).[citation needed]

Prayer

Lord,
plying the well-known pumps of heraldic praise
your hirelings bend double; others, gouty wagtails,
lick the land for crumbs; one snuffs his candle out
and seeks like a eunuch leech
the warm marshes in the cracks of light;
another sissy gives his back to the time-fed rumps
and sheathes his dagger deep.
Lord,
I am not of these.